


Little Red Riding Hood & The Big Bad Wolf

by wolf_shadoe



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fairy Tale Style, Fractured Fairy Tale, Halloween, Season 2, Spuffy-adjacent, episode rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:13:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23973580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolf_shadoe/pseuds/wolf_shadoe
Summary: A fairy-tale, of sorts.Response to a challenge by hcconn: Buffy gets her little red riding hood costume at Ethan's instead of the Victorian dress.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	Little Red Riding Hood & The Big Bad Wolf

**Author's Note:**

> I tossed away the rules and had fun with this fic, but I have tried to stay true to the common elements of the original stories. Complete as a one-shot, unless I'm dragged back in. Enjoy!  
> Apologies and attributions to Charles Perrault, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Charles Marelles, and James Finn Garner, for fairy-tales I've mangled. Also to Carl Ellsworth, for the episode Halloween.  
> Hugest thank yous to both Micrindle23 and Touchstoneaf, betas extraordinaire. I am thoroughly spoilt 💙  
> Any remaining mistakes are all mine.

Once upon a time, there was an unorthodox little slayer. Although she performed her duties with great precision and care, she was frequently all bendy with the rules, and thus had several good friends who knew of her calling and occasionally went so far as to accompany her on patrol. She even had a boyfriend. Sort of.

But as her nascent sexuality began to bloom, the little slayer found herself fettered and constrained inside yet another layer of social expectations. The boyfriend valued innocence and demure little glances, and try though she might, she never seemed to quite be able to behave or present herself to his liking. He did not approve of her spontaneity. He did not appreciate her efforts to move things beyond the rather chaste kisses they had shared. He did not appear to be cognisant of the fact that she was not, in actuality, a child, but rather a young woman, with needs and desires - and even ideas - of her own. (He did not accompany her on patrol.)

One day a costume salesperson held a beautiful princess dress up before the little slayer, and she gazed at herself in the mirror in wonder. Her reflection (aided by a certain degree of imaginative embellishment) smiled back at her, genteel and decorous, coiffed and beautiful; in short, everything the boyfriend appeared to desire and which she feared she could never achieve. The dream was enticing, and she allowed herself to bask in it as she mentally calculated the state of her banking accounts.

"It is beautiful," her female companion murmured, appearing at her shoulder, "but I think I still prefer the benefits of the women's liberation movement."

"I can tell," the slayer said dryly, indicating with a lift of one eyebrow the excessively modest ghost costume her companion still held tightly. _Come as you aren't night,_ the slayer had stated. _The perfect chance to get sexy and wild with no repercussions._ Perhaps she had things backwards; perhaps what she needed to do was show the boyfriend exactly how ready-for-more she was. And if he did not approve, she could explain herself away by virtue of the occasion and her need to show sisterhood with her companion.

She passed the dress back to the salesperson. "What do you have in fishnet stockings?" 

  
  


Meanwhile, on the other side of town, a pair of vampires were discussing the coming hallow's eve (one of whom would like it noted that he certainly would have preferred them to be described as _evil_ vampires, however, the narrator denied his request on the grounds that this was 'come as you aren't' night and his professed evilness was the costume he wore every _other_ day of the year).

"The winds whisper," the vampiress purred, "that it is time to discover whether you be Sköll, or Hati. I've a mind to chain these pads of yours and cut off your ears, _pet_ , for Sköll's ball will burn him out from the inside if he catches it."

"Oh?" the (obstreperous) vampire asked, for he had learnt well to heed his mistress's portents.

"I think I should like a new pair of gloves," she replied. "May we visit the square this market day?"

The (disruptive) vampire sighed, though his expression was fond. "Gloves you shall have," he promised her, and turned his attention to the problem of where to find an appropriate pair.

  
  


The little slayer dressed herself in lingerie as red as blood, a pinafore dress as white as snow (with spots), and boots as black as night. Then she gathered the tools of her trade into a wicker basket, covered them up with a square of gingham fabric, and put on the red riding hood her mother had let out for her. It was, she thought as she studied herself in the mirror, perhaps just right. Her pigtail plaits were cute and sweet, the thigh-high fishnets she'd bought from Ethan's peeked out enticingly between the top of her knee-high boots and the bottom of her short dress. Innocent but naughty. She tried on a pout, and decided she looked good enough for the girl-next-door edition of Playboy. Well, fingers crossed.

Before her own plans for the evening could commence, however, she had an errand to perform, having been volunteered to chaperone certain Halloween activities. Her friend Xander arrived in an army costume, her companion Willow chickened out back into the ghost costume, and the three of them walked to the high school together.

"Come, Buffy Summers," the principal said to her. "Here are your group of trick-or-treaters. Take them through their task, for they require supervision. Mind your manners, and represent the school well. Behave yourself on the way, and do not leave the pre-arranged route. And when you greet people, don't forget to say 'Good evening,' and don't peer into the candy bowl first."

"I'll do everything just right," said Buffy, offering to shake the principal's hand.

"Watch that you do," he said with a glower, and turned to the next group.

  
  


There were children roaming the streets like free candy, but Spike, the _wicked_ vampire, had his heart set on a greater prize. The slayer would be made weak, his princess had foretold, and thus he bade his time with rare patience as the evening began.

"Billy Idol?" a teenager said with a scoff. The boy was making his way down the footpath with a handful of costumed school children, and obviously feeling the need to reassert his social standing.

Spike eyed him up and down as he got closer, considering likely flavour and volume of the boy's veins. No, he'd better not, he had other plans for the night. He waited until the boy was about to pass by, then vamped with a short roar, baring his teeth and darting forwards slightly.

The boy fell over his own feet to land on his arse on the curb, panicked and rapidly turning white; the children spooked with him, and one let out a scream.

Spike chuckled, grinning through his fangs. "Be a clever lad and fuck off, alright?" he told him amicably.

"Y-yes sir," the boy stammered, scrabbling back and to his feet. He scurried off half-sideways, watching over his shoulder, most of the children darting after him like minnows.

The last one, a waist-high little morsel in a Beetlejuice costume, removed her lollipop from her mouth to tell Spike, "I like your costume!" before running to catch up, eyes bright with excitement.

Spike chuckled again, shaking his head. On the ground near his feet lay a headband bearing a pair of fluffy white ears, probably dropped by one of the bolting children. _Sköll or Hati?_ Which one had white fur again? After a moment's deliberation he picked them up and arranged them on his head, tossing fortune to fall where it may. Then he let out a bark of eager laughter, and set off to find further targets to toy with. Maybe there was some fun to be had in this holiday. 

  
  


Unbeknownst to either the vampire or the slayer, a new character in town was planning to create his unique version of exactly that. Deep in the back room of the costume store, a middlingly-evil sorcerer crouched before a representation of Janus, God of change and transition, reciting the final stanza of his invocation. The ripples of power had been building, winding, twisting things about all week, and soon the final curtain would roll back.

Something surged through the air as the sorcerer finished speaking, rattling things on shelves, transforming the rubber mice in the window display to a scurrying mass of small furry bodies, and (unexpectedly) converting a book on the table from a vintage edition of Dracula into a VHS tape of Interview With The Vampire. That would have to go. But, all things considered, a very satisfying result.

"Showtime," he murmured, as the screams began outside. 

  
  


Little Red Riding Hood sat up slowly, rubbing at the grassy spots on her elbows where she'd landed on them. Her basket lay on its side on the ground nearby, the lid open and an edge of the cake's wrapping poking out, and she hurried to her feet to retrieve it. The bottle of wine was found to be unbroken, to her great relief, and the cake appeared only slightly dented. _Do not leave the path, or you might fall down and break the glass_ echoed in her memory, and she bit her lip in embarrassment. She could not quite recall _how_ she had come to fall, but knowing her own proclivity for becoming sidetracked, and seeing that the path was nowhere in sight, it was not hard to surmise what had occurred. Brushing her pinafore off a final time, she glanced upwards to orient herself from the treeline, then hurried back towards the woods.

_Wait!_ Buffy shouted at- herself. _Stop! This isn't- ...the way to grandmother's!? And I do_ _not_ _get sidetracked!_

  
  


A block away, a large wolf got to its feet and shook itself from head to tail. The night air was filled with a cacophony of sound, roars and growls, screams and snarls coming from every direction. Altogether it was overwhelming to his sensitive ears and reticent nature, so he took off at a sprint for the nearest edge of the forest. _Stop it, you nit!_ Spike shouted. But he did not listen to himself. 

  
  


The forest was cool and peaceful, and it wasn’t long before Little Red Riding Hood's feet began to slow and her attention to wander. Peering off to the side of the path as she was, she did not notice the arrival of a large, white wolf until he came up beside her. ( _Turn around!_ Buffy had shouted, but to no avail.)

"Good day to you, Little Red Riding Hood," said the wolf, with a truly _wicked_ smirk on his muzzled face.

_Oh, my god._ Buffy had a horrible feeling that she _recognised_ the deviously pleased gleam in those eyes, and the tingle on the back of her neck confirmed it. _I am_ _so_ _going to kick your ass for this… Spike?_

Unfortunately, her fairy-tale self did not seem to be paying any heed to that warning tingle, and appeared to be neither the least bit afraid of him nor preparing to smack that look off his face. "Thank you, wolf," she heard herself say politely. _Did I just curtsy? Please tell me I did not dip some version of a curtsy just now._

"Where are you going so early, Little Red Riding Hood?" asked the wolf.

_Ha. Good question. And hey, when did morning happen?_ Soft sunlight fell in dappled spots through the trees, and birds sang high above her somewhere. "To grandmother's," she replied. _I don't even_ _have_ _a living grandmother._

"And what are you carrying under your apron?" the Spike-wolf crooned, sliding his tongue along his teeth in a decidedly _un_ -canine grin as his gaze travelled the length of her body hungrily.

_Pig. You should have been a piglet, Spike._ Buffy found herself tilting her basket towards him in explanation, and woah, were they crossing versions of this tale or what? "Grandmother is sick and weak, and I am taking her some cake and wine. We baked yesterday, and they should be good for her and give her strength." Apparently her non-existent grandmother was also a wino.

"Little Red Riding Hood, just where does your grandmother live?" the wolf asked, and had she had any doubt left, that sly-yet-playful tone would have removed it.

"Her house is a good quarter hour from here in the woods, under the three large oak trees. There's a hedge of hazel bushes there." _But not anywhere in Sunnydale, so where the not-hellmouth are we?_ "You must know the place," she said encouragingly. _What the hell is wrong with you, hood-girl? Did they not teach common sense in seventeen-whats-it? Stranger danger? Not to go alone into the woods and talk to wolves? Or, wait, I guess this story is kinda how they did._

Buffy gritted her teeth - without _actually_ gritting her teeth - and began walking down the path again. A few seconds later the wolf took a couple of jogging steps to catch up, dropping casually into place on her left.

For a time he was mercifully silent but for the soft panting of his breath and padding of his feet. His tongue lolled out of the end of his mouth slightly, and she wondered whether she could make him bite it off with the right kick to his chin. _That'd wipe the cocky grin off your face, buster._ Only, she wasn't quite certain she _would_ attempt it, even if she could, because he might be an evil vampire wolf but there was still something endearingly puppyish about those little velvety triangles of ears and that fluffy bush of a tail.

"Little Red Riding Hood, just look at the beautiful flowers that are all around us," he said after a time, his voice gently lyrical and a very different type of British from anything she would have associated with Spike. If she was not mistaken there was a look of sudden alarm in his blue eyes at the sound of it. _Ha! Tell me more about the beautiful flowers, Spikey._ As quickly as it had appeared, however, the expression vanished, and he almost seemed to roll his eyes sardonically as he continued, "Why don't you go and take a look? And I don't believe you can hear how beautifully the birds are singing. You are walking along as though you were on your way to school. It is very beautiful in the woods," he finished with a very heavy sense of mockery.

_Yeah, well, you have dog lips. How do you even talk?_ But she was looking around now, noticing on some distant level how the sunbeams danced to and fro through the trees, and that the ground was indeed covered with his _beautiful flowers._ Her feet slowed. A disturbingly foreign train of thought demanded her attention; if she took a fresh bouquet to grandmother, grandmother would be very pleased. Anyway, it was still early, and she'd still be home on time. _No! Don't… urgh. I'm doing it, aren't I? Yep, here goes Buffy, skipping off into the woods just like the big bad wolf suggested._ Determined to at least deny him the satisfaction of her frustration, she swallowed it down and tried to watch her stupid self wandering off with little more than an imaginary lifted eyebrow.

The most beautiful flower, of course, was always just a little way off from the last one she had picked, and she pulled her own probably-mostly-imaginary eyeroll at herself as she ran further and further into the woods.

Spike, she was certain, would be running straight to the grandmother's house, and she _really_ hoped there was no one there to meet him. 

  
  


As soon as not-so-red Riding Slayer was out of sight, Spike’s feet turned and began carrying him swiftly down the path. _Onward to grandmother's, then._ There was a wonderful ease to his motion, the peculiarities of the sensation of running on four unfamiliar limbs notwithstanding, and for a minute he let himself simply enjoy it, putting distance between himself and the slayer in a smooth loping run. Sunlight fell in filtered beams and dapplespots, catching his eyes with its movement constantly as it danced across the forest floor. Sensibly alarmed though he'd been when it first appeared, it hadn't seemed to harm him in this form, so he tried to push it to one side in his mind and focus on the problem at hand. The slayer, with her little olive-green cape which it seemed safe to assume was actually red (poor wolves didn't know what they were missing in a slaughter if the red stuff blended into the moss and leaves like that). The slayer with her hair that glinted and gleamed like a bloody golden halo in this dancing light. Yeah, her.

He'd been ready to soundly blame her for this little fairytale role play, but the surprise and rapidly building fury in her eyes had vetoed that idea. Girl was as unwittingly trapped as he was, and wasn't that simply delicious in all its possibility. Assuming no one got all Grimm's about things, he was about to gobble up an old woman and then little miss riding slayer herself. _Perrault. We're doing Perrault. Little Red Riding Hood, not Little Red Cap, and the happy little wolf going on his merry way with a full belly and a grin on his face._ The classics were always the best.

Before long the cottage loomed up ahead of him, under the three large oak trees as promised. _Was that part from Perrault?_ His knowledge of minor background details to versions was more than a little shaky, given that Dru had always scorned the tale in favour of 'The Strange Feast' and its murderous sausage. _Stick to the key points, then. Little miss golden-_ _Red_ _riding hood, the big bad wolf is hungry._ At the door he knocked with one paw, blunt claws making a scratchy thwap-thwap sound on the wood.

There was no answer.

He knocked again, _toc, toc,_ thinking rapidly. _Shit. 'Little Golden-Hood' and her head of bloody golden fire._ He was _not_ biting that. _Hear me, lupine knobhead? There's a grandmother in there and we're damn well going to eat her. Charles Marelles was a two-bit hack and his version can go shove it._

Or not. He stood on his hind legs to work the latch with his front paws, and the door swung open. There was no one home. _Right, new plan._ Had he caused this, with his foolish wanderings into admiration of her hair? Or had she, dictating the tale to make sure she came out on top? Course, could be that her education had let things down, this some sanitised modern mash-up where they all learnt a lesson and parted as friends amongst the happy butterflies and whatnot. Or: neither of them was in charge. But accepting that would be counterproductive to saving his hide, so he shook the idea aside and concentrated firmly on how delectable _Little Red Riding Hood_ would taste. And firmly not on how it would be a terrible waste to take her without a fair fight, or to swallow her whole when he could caress that neck with his fangs.

The bonnet of a cap sitting wonkily on his canine head, he lay down on the bed carefully and pulled the covers up with his teeth. 

  
  


It wasn’t until her arms were completely full that Buf-riding-slayer stopped picking flowers. _Finally. Can we get a move on now?_ Snyder was going to kill her when he found out she'd abandoned her trick-or-treaters, and if Spike had swallowed anyone's grandmother then she had a very clear picture to share with him of exactly how best to slice open a fairy-tale wolf's stomach.

Her character-self seemed to realise at last how much time they'd wasted, and hastened towards the small wooden cottage that appeared around the next bend.

The door of the cottage stood open, sending a jolt of surprise through the idiot in charge of her body. _No shit. That's because the wolf is in there._ She made her way inside slowly, fear trickling its way down her spine at the odd feeling of the place. _No, that's your spidey-senses. Vampire, fifteen feet back._ Everything appeared to be made of wood in here, at least, which boded well for replacing her mysteriously-missing weapons. Either that, or she could stake him with the wine bottle and see what happened.

_Oh, my God, why am I so afraid? I usually like it at grandmother's,_ her-not-her thought, and Buffy’s urge to headbutt the wall grew. But that could wait. There was a confrontation swiftly approaching, and if she was going to throw all her concentration into another attempt to regain control of her body then that would be the time for it.

She called out, "Good morning!" but received no answer. The sense of being observed grew, a weight of fervent predatory attention permeating the small home to bump up against her frustration-bolstered fury.

A curtain hung towards the back of the single room, partitioning off one dark corner of it as a bedroom. She headed towards it with slow, purposeful steps, then pulled the curtain back on its railing.

The Spike-wolf lay in the bed, covers pulled up to his chin and a lace-trimmed bonnet sitting jauntily cocked on his head. Somehow he made the look work for him, the bastard, even with those velvety little ears poking out from under the sides. (Mercifully, he did not have the swollen tummy of a wolf who had just swallowed anyone's grandmother.) His eyes glittered with malevolent glee, and one corner of his lips hitched up into a wicked little smirk as he took her in.

She stared at him in silence for a long moment, anticipation building in her veins until she was sure he must see it burning from her narrowed eyes. _Oh I am so ready to throw down right now, fluffy._

"Oh, grandmother, what big ears you have!" she said, and a low, dangerous note made it through to her voice. This was good. Very good.

"All the better to hear you with, my dear," he said in a soft, lilting rhythm.

She took one sliding step closer. "Oh, grandmother, what big eyes you have!" she said, her own widening in a parody of innocent surprise. Her blood was beginning to sing beneath the surface, charged and lit for battle.

"All the better to see you with," he murmured almost absently, and his eyes _were_ big now, bare suddenly and fixed on her with an expression that blended equal parts wonder, fear, and desperate hunger in their very-human depths.

"Oh, grandmother, what big hands you have," she recited, unexpectedly caught off-guard by the shift in mood which seemed to be happening. She took one final step forward to bring her to the edge of the bed, uncertain now of exactly what was about to pass between them but drawn closer to that hunger all the same.

"All the better to embrace you with," he whispered, and it sounded like a promise.

  
  


And then a ripple swept the air, flooding through the cottage, her body, the bed, and the wolf. The bed became an old packing table, littered with newspaper. The wolf became Spike, with a pair of fake fur ears perched on his head. And she regained control of her body.

They watched each other, frozen, recalculating off the changes. Relief and excitement swelled in his eyes, culminating in a wild, devilish joy at this turn in events, and she felt her own racing through her. _Now_ the fun would start.

"What big teeth you have," she told him with a smirk of her own. Then, she lunged.

Her dropped basket hit the floor a half-second after her fist skimmed off the side of his face, and the clatter of wood inside it confirmed that she wouldn't have to try the wine bottle thing. Spike had moved in the same moment she did, twisting to lessen the impact of her punch and spring to his feet on the floor behind her, sheets of newspaper flying. His first punch missed her by millimeters as she jerked her head to one side, but the second landed squarely on her ribs, knocking her back a step. She swept a foot up in the same movement, connecting with the side of his hip as he tried to push the advantage, bowling him from his feet.

Spike hit the ground and rolled smoothly back up, loose-limbed and grinning rakishly. One of his costume ears had been bent down, matching somehow to the scar on his brow. "That’s not all that's big," he replied, and did something with his tongue that was illicitly obscene enough to cause an instant war between her body's impulse to blush and an opposing one to send all her blood rushing somewhere much lower.

"No," she agreed, closing in on him again, "there's also your foul mouth." They exchanged a quick series of punches, neither managing to do much more than shove each other around, and he waggled his tongue at her in answer between two blows. _God, you're irrepressible.  
_

"Enjoy skipping off into the woods, did you?" he asked, a rich snicker of amusement rolling through him.

"Oh, but the flowers were so splendidly _beautiful,_ " she said in her best imitation of the disturbingly English-gentleman voice he'd used to point them out to her.

"That’s right hideous on your lips," he said with a dramatised wince. "Think you'd best stick to smaller words."

"Okay," she said, grinning, and clocked him in the mouth while his eyes were still tracking her one-shouldered shrug.

His face flashed surprise at the speed of the hit, then his sense of loose playfulness sharpened on a dime into a lethal precision. Instead of immediately hitting out in return, he began to circle her slowly, slinking and sinuous as he watched for an opening.

Buffy turned with him, her own focus stepping up a notch and the air seeming to vibrate with anticipation. _This_ was what she was made for, every electric nerve in her body tuned and tightened like a bowstring, everything forgotten but the next move and the one after that. He could match her for speed and strength, she suspected, and the knowledge, which should probably have made her worried, only served to heighten her determination to close with him and come out on top.

He struck lightning-fast, feinting twice before kicking out at her leg and driving a fist into the side of her head. She let herself stumble, catching his forearm on the return and using it to turn her momentum into a high kick to his chin. For a few seconds they each landed blows viciously without making any attempts to block, then they broke apart again, both panting slightly. Her top lip throbbed on one side, and she felt it out with her tongue, tasting a trickle of blood. His eyes followed its path, dark-lashed and desirous, then slid back to hers as he felt out the side of his jaw carefully.

"Nice boots," he told her in a low, appreciative voice.

"All the better to kick you with," she murmured back. "Had enough?"

"Never," he swore.

_Right answer._ She shifted her weight, inviting him to try again. 

  
  


Far behind them, a door burst open in a shrieking twist of metal from its flimsy frame. "Buffy?" Angel bellowed, racing into the cottage-cum-abandoned-factory.

"Here," she called out, a misplaced feeling of disappointment leeching the volume from what should have been a shout. She kept her eyes firmly on Spike, but he had turned towards the door, almost appearing to be standing beside her in comradeship as his lips dropped into a little frown and he let out a regretful sigh.

" _Spike,_ " Angel spat, reaching her and stopping a half-step closer to Spike. "If you've done anything to her-"

Spike cut him off with an utterly humourless cackle, dark and twisted with some deep-seated resentment, slinking back jackal-like as he did. "Deflowered your little red-kissed maiden, you mean?" he asked from the shadows. He huffed a breath of a laugh, then said cockily, "Flowers were plucked, yeah."

"If you've touched her-" Angel growled.

Buffy relented on tracking Spike’s steps in order to turn her attention to Angel, who seemed to be intent on handling that job himself. "What's going on?" He must have been looking for her, and, _oh crap_ , she hoped it was because her trick-or-treaters had returned safe but Buffy-less to raise the alarm.

Angel ignored her, other than to step further between her and her slowly retreating opponent.

Spike scoffed. "Didn’t touch a single hair on the head of any naive little girl," he said, making his way around them slowly in a wide semicircle. "Or anywhere else. Projecting, Angelus," he tossed out.

"Angel," Angel corrected.

"Funny," Spike said, in a tone that wasn't, "because something looks awfully familiar here." He'd reached the door that Angel had come in from, and stopped there, tilting his head as he considered the two of them speculatively. Turning his focus exclusively on her, he asked quietly, "You know how the story ends?"

"Womyn and wolves solve their own problems without a man's help?" she suggested, and lifted her eyebrows. It was her favourite version, and feeling suddenly needed, what with her victory here having been snatched out from under her and Angel positively vibing with possessive masculinity while also ignoring her entirely.

Spike grinned, laughter dancing in his eyes. Then he smoothed his features, and quoted to her without a trace of irony or insult, " _Attractive young ladies should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say "wolf," but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are toothless, and… intriguingly broody, and all dark and mysterious, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all_ ." Lowering his voice, he finished, "There are worse things in the books than being gobbled up, Goldy." He gave her a nod. "Till next time, slayer." Then he was gone.

Buffy stared after him for a moment, then bent to pick up a pair of fluffy white ears from where they'd been forgotten on the floor, thoughts and emotions swirling and a whole lot of _huh?_ uppermost on them.

"Are you alright?" Angel asked, turning to face her. His gaze landed on her bloodied lip, and his expression went from concerned to uncomfortable.

_What was that all about?_ she desperately wanted to ask, but it was hard for Angel to have to think about things that had happened in his past, and she didn’t want to hurt him with her insensitive questioning. Especially right now. She licked at her lip quickly, hoping the small split in it would seal up fast so he could relax. "Yes. Yep, let me just…" She cast about for her basket, finding it upended beside the table. A quick check confirmed her supposition - stakes, knife, cross; no cake - and she picked it up, tucking the ears inside too on impulse. "What's been going on?" she repeated, moving towards the door.

Angel followed her at a careful distance. "There was a curse on the costumes…"

  
  


After getting changed and filling in the details over the phone with Willow, Buffy made herself a mug of cocoa and took it up to her bedroom. Angel had deposited her at the door and immediately vanished, but she was still hoping he might reappear at the window to say goodnight. The night was… well, middle-aged and heading towards retirement, but she had the house to herself and a whopping pile of excess energy zooming through her thanks to the curtailing of her fight.

She turned to the wicker basket she'd used with her costume, thinking to unpack and stash her slaying accoutrements safely out of sight. Opening it, she found the pair of ears again, and picked them up to study. They didn't look any more magical than her stockings had. She sat down on her bed, stroking the fur to smooth it out as she thought.

Spike, she reflected, seemed to be intent upon upending every notion she had of proper vampire behaviour, tearing up her expectations with anarchistic glee. There was an odd sense of honour to the way he fought, as though it were an unusual sports game that they'd gambled their lives on and that had understood rules. He'd bowed out tonight, sensibly and effortlessly, when the odds changed unfairly into her favour. He'd done the same when her mother joined their fray in the school, even though she could hardly have presented more than a momentary distraction to him. And in the alleyway behind the Bronze, he'd passed on attacking her entirely, using the meeting instead as a chance to observe and learn. Buying his ticket.

He had also seemed to be entirely unbothered by her blood - sure, he'd _wanted_ it, but he'd not let its presence distract him from his task. He was there for the fight, to pit his skills against a titled opponent, with her body maybe a token prize after the main event. Fighting him, she didn't feel like a girl trying to balance a normal life with her unasked mystical calling and failing on both counts. No, in fighting him she felt like the reigning champion. _Till next time, slayer._ There would be a next time, that much was certain. And something in her thrilled at it.

_There are worse things in the books than being gobbled up._ And just maybe an explanation for the strange tension between Angel and Spike. She toyed with her lip for a moment, then got up to check the window. There was no sign of Angel. Flicking the catch shut, she pulled the curtain tightly closed before retrieving her schoolbag from the floor beside her bed. With a steadily building sense of sneaking into somewhere she shouldn't, she took out the watchers diaries they'd 'borrowed' from Giles and began to read in earnest.

  
  


_Adèle Berger, Paris._ _Mary Hamilton, Selkirk. Frieda Müller, Steinau._ Her hands shook as she closed the book and buried it back in the bottom of her bag. It didn’t mean anything. There was a world of difference between a vampire luring his natural prey and a man… what _was_ Angel intending? He was unwilling to commit to dating her, yet popped out of the shadows again every time she resigned herself to being alone. He told her they could never be together, then kissed her. He claimed that helping her was his destiny, yet restricted that help to the vaguest of dire warnings and pessimistic predictions.

_Adėle Berger, 14,_ who'd let a mysterious stranger into her home and heart, only to watch in horror as her friends and family were slowly picked off one by one by an unknown enemy. Friendless, terrified, she'd run to the perceived safety of his arms, and there been _'violated most unmentionably'_ before death. _Mary, Frieda;_ what they all had disturbingly in common was the slow and precise way Angelus had strung them on, drawn them out, and made much of how their innocent purity could redeem a lost creature such as he. The death scenes were different, but the pattern the same.

Angel wasn't Angelus. In Angel's arms she felt protected, like a precious, fragile thing. Yet… lately she also felt herself being made small to fit there; burgeoning parts of herself squashed down to fit inside the icon of virtue he needed. And she was not a submissive, naive little girl. She was the slayer.

Buffy checked the window's lock again, then climbed into bed. She dreamt of walking to the woods with a woodchopper's axe in her hands, and cutting down every tree that blocked her view of the grinning wolf ahead.

She awoke early, body still wired for the conclusion-less battle. She slid her hands down under the covers, and if there were blue eyes and cut-glass cheekbones in her mind's eye when she climaxed, well, that was no one's business but her own.

  
  


Spike's feet slowed as he neared home, and he found himself smoothing his hair back again, unconsciously trying to rub off the invisible print of those ears. He shook himself, resettled the collar of his coat, and firmly shoved all thoughts of the slayer to the back of his brain before opening the door.

Drusilla sat at the table, hands meekly folded in her lap and an array of little pebbles spread out before her. She didn't react when he entered the room, other than to turn her gaze from one stone to the next, and an uncomfortable (and entirely unwarranted) feeling of guilt began to nudge at his belly.

He flung himself into the seat opposite and kicked his feet up on the table's edge, seizing upon a blink of indignation for her unstated accusation.

"She has filled your stomach up with rocks," Drusilla said, then looked up at last. "Can you feel them?" She watched him steadily with feline eyes, cold and cruel and full of closed-lipped knowledge.

He fought the urge to squirm like a mouse trapped beneath her claws, and reached into a pocket for his cigarettes instead. "Story didn't go that far," he told her, willing away the sensation her words had conjured. He flicked his zippo to life, and his eyes were caught for a moment by the blinding heart of the flame against the surrounding darkness of the room. Then he continued lighting with his cigarette, snapped the lid shut, and slipped it back into his pocket. "Spell broke. Backup arrived. Had to scarper."

"No…" she said, her expression twisting in distaste as she watched him, "the spell has only just begun." She lifted an arm and swept it across the table suddenly, flinging pebbles out in every direction, some bouncing off him and rolling away across the floor. "Run," she spat at him, then made her way hissing from the room, closing the door behind her.

He slept that day on a couch littered with yet more pebbles, and dreamt that he was Sköll, the wolf cursed to chase the sun in its chariot across the sky. Queen Mab galloped behind him with arms full of petals and curly words, and it was hard to tell at times whether he fled or chased. Finally he caught a blood-red ribbon daintily in his teeth, and the chariot's plaited reins unraveled, freeing a tumbling cascade of golden fire that rippled out across a night sky. He laid down the ribbon to take up the fire in his mouth, and it burnt through his throat in torturous, screaming, agony-ecstasy, and all the while, soft, warm hands fondled his ears tenderly.

He awoke in a panic to the smell of fire, and found Drusilla burning books in a frenzy. He watched in silence as pages caught and curled and fell to ash, and the flames were a dull and drab thing beside the green-gold eyes that had overlain the sky in his dreams.


End file.
